As stated in the previous posts, which I have to recognize you may not have read since readers likely find this entry by searching, there were a few rudimentary notes accompanying a single daily photograph from back in 2007 when we made this trip up the Oregon Coast. For some reason or other, I didn’t bother to even do that for the last few days of our journey. While I expanded those posts with extra photos and a bunch of new text, I do not have the benefit of even a paragraph to help flesh out this day and the two that follow. I’m not going to try and interpret where I was with my thinking 13 years ago when we stood here looking out at Heceta Head Lighthouse or any of the other locations along the path we followed this day.

I will, though, try to add location data, such as this shot that comes from the Cape Perpetua Scenic Area.

Then there’s this image of a crashing wave that must be about 30-40 feet high. I shot this at Devils Churn, also part of Cape Perpetua. For some reason, I don’t have many images of the churn itself. This would have been our first-ever visit, and while the explosive water out at the shoreline was spectacular, it would be on a subsequent visit that I’d learn why this location earned its name. Of the few photos I did take, the water rushes into the gap on our right and sloshes around. Coming back on a different visit to Oregon, when conditions were right, we witnessed the water pounding itself into a frothy creamy-like consistency, which splashes and ripples into sculpted, transitional works of art that ride on the pulsing current. I hope that at the time we were here, I already clearly understood the dynamics of how weather, time of day, and time of year impact a place and influence its appearance. Maybe I did get it back in 2007, but I feel that I understand this a lot better at this stage in my life.

Hey, I’ve got a great idea. How about you step out of the car with some of our bread and see if the seagulls will take it from your hand? It turned out that this is a great way to recreate scenes from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film The Birds.

Our original itinerary had us traveling from Waldport east on the 34 through Tidewater and Alsea before reaching Philomath out near Corvallis before turning west on Highway 20 through Blodgett and Eddyville, finally going south on Elk City Road and following a small road to Toledo and then Newport back out on the coast. With the gray weather, we must have decided that the photography of the countryside would be less than great, so we skipped the 125-mile loop detour and went straight to Newport.

While we didn’t go to the aquarium specifically to see this Baron Vladimir Harkonnen fish stuck to the tank window, it was certainly a highlight.

Caroline struggled to identify this bird, as finding photos of it wasn’t all that easy. Sure, it kind of looks like a puffin, but they have seriously distinctive colorings, while this bird is gray. Well, it turns out that the winter plumage of the Tufted Puffin looks just like this.

As for this bird, it remains a mystery shorebird that escaped her best efforts to identify it.

On our left is one of the iconic sights found on the coast of Oregon, but since we have arrived at low tide my photo was less than stellar, so I present you with Otter Crest Beach North of Devils Punchbowl Natural Area.

From The Lookout here at Cape Foulweather, you can have one of the most unique views on the entire Oregon coast.

This is the view south. You should make a visit yourself to see the view out to sea or up north; it’s well worth your effort.

In our memories, we’d passed the Lincoln City Glass Center a hundred times before we finally committed to stopping in and giving it a go. As a former union member of the Glass Bottle Blowers Association of Los Angeles back when I worked for Owens-Illinois as an apprentice bottle maker, I’d had enough of playing with glass, so I operated the camera while Caroline worked to make her dream come true.

Her objective was to make a “Wave Float” using the colors of the area that would remind us of the Oregon coast for years to come should we not be able to return. Little could we have guessed back then that over the next 13 years, we’d return 11 more times. The float still sits on our counter, and should the day come when we move back to Europe; it is one of the things that will come back with us.

The night was spent in a yurt at Beverly Beach, which turned out to be our least favorite State Park with too much road noise from Highway 101, not that we didn’t try it again.